The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
For various contexts and devices, unique identifiers have been assigned to devices for interested parties to track the devices. In the context of computers and networks, unique network addresses are assigned to each computer on the network. Further, components within the computers may be assigned unique identifiers. If management systems are used to manage computers or other network devices, use of such identifiers requires synchronizing the identifiers to the management systems. When it becomes necessary or desirable to change the value of the unique identifier for a particular device, past approaches have been inadequate.
One past approach has been to manually enter the new value into the system associated with the device. For example, changing the identifier for a router in a packet-switched network requires service people to manually update associated management systems. However, this approach is costly because it requires manual intervention.
In the context of management of complex networks of telecommunications service providers, the service provider management domain can consist of multiple management points each with a specific function within the overall business workflow. For example, the management points may include a billing system, provisioning system, fault detection system, etc. Within the management domain, there is a need to associate with each managed device, a unique identifier (ID) referenced by the providers' device management point(s).
When delivering messages from a management point to a device, a transport protocol typically expects the device to be addressed by the device's unique ID. Further, each management point typically expects each message received from a device to include the device's ID, which is then referenced by a management point as a key into its database of logical device objects. Service providers assume that the management points and the device are synchronized with respect to the value of the device's unique ID.
However, it is possible for the device to be reconfigured using command-line interface (“CLI”) commands such that the unique ID of the device will change from the original value assumed by the management points. The device's reconfiguration, which causes the change in unique ID, can originate from any of the management points or a component of a management point or be configured manually directly by a human accessing the device via a console. When the change does not issue from a management point, there may be no way for the management point to know that a change occurred, unless the management point is manually updated with the new value. Manual updating is undesirable for many reasons.
Thus, when such a configuration change occurs, synchronization is lost, and the management points and the device are no longer be able to communicate. Accordingly, there is a need for an automated way to synchronize the management points to a changed unique identifier or a network device.
For example, the unique ID of a device may be modified as part of bootstrapping a customer premises equipment (“CPE”) device within the context of automated flow-through provisioning. Alternatively, when two service providers merge, the unique ID of devices may require changes to accommodate a merging of the unique ID name space associated with the CPE devices.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for a way to synchronize a change in the value of a particular device's unique identifier with one or more management points or systems.